It is good to take it. Folks were afraid of the hangover, many didn't want to admit till well after halfway through the season that there could even be a hangover, myself included however, tanking an entire season will hopefully prove a mistake has been learned from, more then learning from someone else's mistake, your own the hard way. You just gotta believe the elements are there to sustain an aggressive approach toward maintaining a championship posture. Finally, there is something good to take from this season. Recognition for what simply does not work.
2008 Season (1) Hangover from 2007 Nat'l Championsip (2) Loss of Bo Pelini (3) Inexperience at QB / Loss of RP That about sums it up in my opinion.
I notice that some are quick to jump on the coaches for the lack of senior leadership out there, but many times, the peers HAVE to be the ones to step up and make it known that going half-@$$ed is unacceptable. I see this in the classroom. I'm sure the coaches were aware of all of this, but it's about freakin' time that Johnson, Helms, and Jackson meet about this and become leaders. If our guys gets their butts in gear, they WILL win the GT game. For that matter, I still believe that, had we actually beaten Bama, we'd not have lost to Ole Miss and Arkansas. That was a back-breaker.
stacey, i had this conversation throughout the season with a friend. leadership isnt something that the coaches can "anoint". that isnt leadership. it must come from within and someone must find it in themselves to step up and lead the team. that didnt happen. that is one thing i dont blame on the coaches. and it was one of the biggest disappointments to me.
All true enough...but if big Herm's words are any indicator, the coaches weren't helping. You'd at least expect them to try to pick up the slack left from lack of leadership. Maybe if a few of these guys had seen passion from the coaches, they would have been inspired to find it in themselves.
that is not enough. There has to be at least 1 more line saying something like -- No team leadership from the Senior Members of the team. I would probably list it as... (1)No team leadership from the Senior Members of the team (2) Hangover from 2007 Nat'l Championsip (3) Loss of Bo Pelini (4) Inexperience at QB / Loss of RP The lack of leadership was the #1 problem with the team this year.
The National Championship hangover was a big one. The guys on last year's team had never won a National Championship as starters, while the returning starters on the 2008 squad just got fed. This also extended to the coaches on at least some level... winning the National Championship is the holy grail for a coach -- in fact, one of Miles' mentors, Bo Schembechler, never won a National Championship, despite winning 13 Big Ten Championships, and having one of the greatest win percentages in coaching history. Loss of Pelini/trusting Mallory and Peveto to handle DC in addition to their jobs as position coaches -- that wasn't good. Listening to all the great high school coaches that have built powerhouse programs that won another state championship this weekend -- they all credited their defensive coaches with doing a great job of getting the defense ready to play at championship caliber, something that our defensive coaches at LSU failed to do this year. Loss of RP was bigger than just losing an outstanding upperclassman QB, it also affected the team chemistry by getting players upset on some level over the decision to kick RP of the team. Of course RP had made a lot of close friendships during his three years on the LSU team -- and LSU's receiving core that had practiced with RP for years certainly weren't happy about how we kicked RP off the team in favor of the new QBs that had only been at LSU for a year. Another big one was that the seniors on our football team don't have the same heart and character as seniors we've had in other years. You can try and coach heart and character, but those are inherent traits that a player will either have or not have. Either we weren't that thrilled about the heart and character of those guys when we recruited them, but got stuck with them because the pickings were so slim that year--or we didn't focus enough on heart and character when we recruited them. Fortunately, it appears that in recent recruiting classes, heart and character has been something we focus on.
